


Memoir

by InsaneVoice



Category: Original Work
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-12
Updated: 2014-11-12
Packaged: 2018-11-30 00:18:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 791
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11452074
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/InsaneVoice/pseuds/InsaneVoice
Summary: The death of a loved one makes you feel like shit, and it is a feeling that can stick to you for yourentirelife.--"...tortuous waiting and watching Grandma suffer..."





	Memoir

**Author's Note:**

> An old work that was written for school. I remember that I completed it in one sitting at like 1 o'clock in the morning the day before it was due.

Losing a close loved one is something everyone dreads with a passion. The feeling it leaves you with is like the hollow sound from tapping on metal. The sound travels with a jolt of emotion that fades with time but you feel as if the echo is still out there traveling, just beyond your range of hearing. I still feel that echo of emotion whenever I think back to the day my Grandmother, the woman I was so close to I would call ‘Mom’, died.

I can still feel the emotion brought on by my Grandmother's death crawling across my skin today. My memories of that day may be fading but I can never forget the feelings that were knotted so tightly together. One fragment of memory that I can still see very clearly is looking up at my Grandmother in her hospital bed, covered in sweat, trying to wiggle out of the restraints they put her in because of how she kept trying to take out her IV so she could leave her bed. I remember feeling so much fear looking at my Grandmother like that. I had never seen her act so delirious before. It didn’t even look like she was my Grandmother anymore and that freaked me out. It was such a strong feeling of dread. I felt as if there was a pressure at the base of my skull and right across my upper back. The feeling I get when I feel as if someone is watching me. Waiting, expecting I'm going to do something. I felt powerless because I knew I couldn’t do a single thing to help the woman who I saw almost more than my own Mother, the woman who raised me.

I was forced awake on the day of dread by my Mom. I remember her telling me that I had to get dressed fast, that we needed to hurry to Grandma's, that something was wrong with her. The car ride is mostly a blurred smudge of painted memory but I do remember stopping at the traffic light on the turnout of our neighborhood. It’s a strange thing to remember. It has no importance whatsoever, I don't even remember the words that were said. All I knew was that something was horribly wrong and that my Mom sounded scared, that she looked frustrated and jittery. When we got to the house I can picture myself going down the hallway to the back rooms where the bedrooms were and seeing my Grandma curled up on her side moaning and mumbling about something. I remember her telling me to get out and the feeling of hurt that gave me, like a child scolded because I did something bad, It scared me because she honestly did not look like my Grandmother anymore.

After I scattered out of her room I remember running up to my mother in a shy panic and then fragments of our conversation that ran along the lines that Grandma probably just wanted to change out of her nightgown. She never did, the next time I went in everything was the same sometime later my mom told me to call 911; I don’t really remember the experience what I do remember is standing outside watching my Mom flag down the ambulance coming down the street, a struggle to get the gurney through the door, and watching the flashing lights on the back of the ambulance while my Mom, with her face hard, speed down the road after it. The next thing that comes to mind is the image of the security guy on duty at the front of the emergency room trying to cheer me up while he takes my picture for the sticker that says I’m allowed to stay inside.

During our tortuous waiting and watching Grandma suffer from something we have no power to sooth only one other memory really stands out. My Grandpa, unable to watch his significant other like that any longer decided to take a walk outside. I went with him but the funny thing is that I have no memory about what we talked about but I do remember that we were locked outside and had to wait for someone to walk through the emergency doors, for the ambulance, to get back inside. I have no idea why that fragment of my memory stayed with me either but it did.

The very last thing to stick with me in my time degraded memory is driving home with my dad from the hospital after I had enough of being there, surrounded by death and the worry that I may never see my Grandmother’s smiling face ever again. Then my Mom’s broken voice over the phone. Grandma was dead.


End file.
